Assessing spirituality through personal goals: Implications for research on religion and subjective well-being

This article is concerned with the conceptual and methodological issues in the measurement of personal goals, with special emphasis on assessing spiri tual and religious content in goals. The research literature on personal go als and subjective well-being is reviewed and synthesized. A comparison of several popular goal units in the research literature is included. Coal con tent and goal conflict have been reliably associated with well-being in pas t research. Spiritual or religious content in personal goals emerges as hav ing an especially strong influence on well-being, and recent research on sp iritual personal strivings and well-being is summarized. One of the primary purposes of the article is to consider conceptual and methodological chall enges in the measurement of spirituality through personal goals. The advant ages of a combined idiographic-nomothetic approach to measuring spiritualit y through purposive behavior are enumerated. A personal goals approach to s tudying spiritual motivation can make an important contribution to understa nding how religiosity affects well-being, thus expanding religion's role in quality of life research.